Here, then, was a task to strain all his powers, and absorb all his benevolence. Here was misery to be alleviated, and injustice to be redressed, and a nation to be aroused from its culpable negligence. Benevolent, liberal, systematically and perseveringly charitable, not averse to the exercise of authority and censorship, of restless and untameable energy, and of a singular constancy and firmness of purpose, the task employed all his virtues, and what in some positions of life would have proved to be his failings. Even to his love of travel, his new occupation suited him. What wonder that, with all these aptitudes, the _religious man_, devoured by his desire to do some good and great work, should have devoted to it his life and his fortune, his days and his nights, and every faculty of his soul. He had now found his path. His foot was on it; and he trod it to his dying hour. After inspecting the jails of England, Scotland, and Ireland, he, in 1775, took the first of those journeys on the Continent, which had, for their sole object, the inspection of prisons. And henceforward, in all his travels, he is so absorbed in this one object, that he pays attention to nothing else. Not the palace, rich with painting and sculpture; not the beautiful hills and valleys--only the prison and the lazaretto can retain him for a moment. Once he is tempted to hear some fine music--it distracts his attention--he foregoes the music. The language of Burke, in his well-known panegyric, is true as it is eloquent. "He has visited all Europe--not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of temples--not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art--not to collect medals or collate manuscripts--but to dive into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain, to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt, to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and compare and collate the distresses of all men, in all countries. His plan is original, and it is full of genius as it is of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery, a circumnavigation of charity. Already the benefit of his labour is felt more or less in every country. I hope he will anticipate his final reward, by seeing all its effects fully realised in his own."